Backyard Aquaponics
A place to discuss aquaponics

The two big tomato trees are dieing, while other tomato varieties are still fine.

Winter Solstice
2011-12-21 / 17:16 <-- --> 2011-12-22 / 05:30

We are getting close to the longest night of the year (and the longest day on the southern hemisphere). = The lowest sun = the least "heating"

I know the spring is still far away, but its an important turning point worth a little celebration!


Other good news on the evaporation/hummidity issue!

Seems like switching to CF has a huge positive effect. And if we think of it its absolutely logical!

In an FD system the GB-s suck air when draining, and push it out when filling.
Here is how its working:

Most of the time my air temp is lower than the system temp. (The oposite is only true if the sunn is shinig into the GH, or shortly after. Maximum 1/3 of a day, but only on sunny days.)

1. While draining, the cold air goes in, finds a huge surface inside the GB, where its warmed and also due to the water its humidified to 100%. (Also air is actually cooling down the system a tiny bit.)

2. While the GB fills up, the air is pushed out by the water. And outside its colder, so the hummidity has to be precipitated.

And it starts again with each cycle. Quite logical isn't it?

While if run CF the air doesn't get in the GB, is not heated and hummidified, not forced out to be precipitated. I feel this is a huge part of my hummidity problems.

I haven't covered the tanks yet, but the swich to CF allready has a quite visible effect! Im still expecting more of from the tank covering project!

Here is a lline from the datalogger's file:
2011/12/18 11:35:56; 12.06; 12.25; 13.63; 5.06; 16.62; 921; 9; 58

resolving the line of data:

Date&time;
inside air temp; (Celsius)
system water; (Celsius)
thermal mass temp; (Celsius)
outside air temp; (Celsius)
datalogger case inside temp; (Celsius, ist alwas higher a bit due to the datalogger's chip is heating it.)
light; (measures 0-1024, where 0 is full dark, 1024 is full light)
hummidity outside; (measures 0-1024, where 0 is RM <20% and 1024 is more than 90%)
hummidity inside; (measures 0-1024, where 0 is RM <20% and 1024 is more than 90%)

Going into the news.
I'll be hosting an important guest on thursday. A reporter of a local online news portal, its gona be a hard job to write an arcticle to make the people understand this whole concept. I fear its way too much stuff for an average person, so probably I have to highlight some intersting pieces. I think I'll open a new topic for this...

Good news zsazsa!

It's your idea!


All of you! Please help me with your advices on entering the media!

http://www.backyardaquaponics.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=1&t=11313

Actually my system has been running continuous for a long time, maybe that is why I haven't seen too many condensation problems yet but then again I don't have gravel beds or plants or fish ATM either hahaha.

Inspireing me!

http://www.oninnovation.com/topics/detail.aspx?playlist=2121&title=Will+Allen

2011/12/23 14:5:15
system water: 9.00 C
inside: 11.25 C
thermal mass: 12.00 C
outside: 1.00 C
light: 852
humidity in: 4 (~21%)
hummidity out: 0 ( lesst than 20%)

Merry Chirsitmas to all of you!

Insightful link and good news on your GH, wishing you a nice weekend neigbour

I'm not used to cleaning home grown trout outside in 2C cold water when the snow falls, it not fun but its a huge satisfaction, and a proof that my dream came true.

I did it twice in the last two days. I had two little ones from the fridge, and picked two fresh.







They served a a perfect warm starter, tasted perfect.

The second set had to be the bigger ones, as there where more guests.

And this time I didnt forget to measure the "big guy"



The big guy was 470gr (370 gutted).




I told everyone that recipie is special as it starts like this: "Pick a trout from your backyard aquaponics system..."

Hello Zsazsa!

Merry Christmas to you and all your beloveds!

The trout pictures are really inspiring and show that you are probably on the right track with your system. Also the system data seems very interesting, I mean the temperatures (and humidity as well). How could you lower the internal humidity? Was covering the beds (and tank) enough? I was thinking about a fan directed towards the coldest surface (either the heat mass or one of the glazing sheets during night). The air could cool down on the cold surface and the dew could simply trickle down and absorbed in the "ground". (I know you have no direct contact with soil in the GH, hence the parentheses around "ground" above.)

Anyway, it seems you could lower the humidity inside, which is a good thing.

You know I don't have a system like yours and only daydreaming about one but if I were you I would be curious about the quality of water in the system NOW, in winter, when there are much less photosynthetic activity than in summer when everything is growing like crazy. I may be wrong but I "feel" that if nothing else but the nitrates might get accumulated due to the lower nitrate uptake by the plants. Do you do partial water changes or just refill what is lost to evaporation?

It seems that strawberries are nice and strong (and dark green) on the photos, maybe they are one of the best candidates for winter growing. Being forest understory plants in the wild they might be accustomed to low light conditions during their evolution.

Keep up the good work and regular reports and photos coming,

Cheers,

Pumukli

Way to go Zsazsa...

I'm hitting the media!

The arcticle about me has been published, here you can read it with google translate which is a crap as it fails to translate hungarian, but ist not a surprise at all as we have a very complicated and uniquely rich language. But at least you can get an inpression.

http://translate.google.hu/translate?sl=hu&tl=en&js=n&prev=_t&hl=hu&ie=UTF-8&layout=2&eotf=1&u=http%3A%2F%2Fcivishir.hu%2Fhajdu-bihari-hirek%2Fagrarforradalom-egy-debreceni-hatso-kertben%2F1231121853

I was affraid of the comlexity but so far it seems that people understand it and has allready had an innormously huge number of visitors.

The arcticle is to be continued with two more, on entering the topic of sustainable new arigculture, and the other to show the failure of our current education system.

Happy new year to all aquaponic enthusiasts!

Fantastic Zsa Zsa, that came up very well, I think anyway! Your system looked good and if it is generating interest that is even better. Well done and congratulations!

Good job zsazsa!